On the other hand, they(TM) have an interest in the failure narrative being perpetuated. The housing shortfall in the US is severe, somewhere around 5 million units, depending on where you look. A good chunk of the electorate cannot afford starting their own household, they live with roommates or their parents. Imagine they pointed to 1960s Lisbon or late 1950s Soviet Russia and insisted the government implement a sensible housing policy. It would be a bloodbath for investors and consequently cannot be allowed to happen.
> Imagine they pointed to 1960s Lisbon or late 1950s Soviet Russia and insisted the government implement a sensible housing policy. It would be a bloodbath for investors and consequently cannot be allowed to happen.
Those buildings would be illegal in most of the US. If similar quality and floor space per inhabitant was legal to build you could indeed solve housing problems in short order. No need to have the state do it. If flophouses/SROs were legal developers would build them.
>It would be a bloodbath for investors and consequently cannot be allowed to happen.
If it will be a bloodbath for investors it's not a matter of not allowing it, people just won't invest and it won't happen anyway. Or the government will massively subsidise it and under-wright it to make it happen, and the public purse will carry the can. If it were financially viable on it's own, the private sector would most likely do it anyway, but if you're starting from the point of financial non-viability of your housing scheme as a starting assumption, blaming investors seems a bit silly.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by a degenerate speculative market, but if you've got some special way to perceive value others haven't, watch out Warren Buffett.
I mean a market selling houses that will never be lived in and exist solely as a speculative investment for foreign buyers, one where corporations and funds behave like feudal lords while people remain renters their whole lives and get evicted at will.
I'm not surprised you don't understand what I mean when I speak of the value of housing if your first thought is Warren Buffet. The value of a house is the stability, safety and shelter it gives to the citizenry, it's allowing people who live in it to prosper and to build families.
